


Market

by Brighid



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Ballad 39: Tam Lin, Fairy, Future Fic, Goblin Market, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-09
Updated: 2015-08-09
Packaged: 2018-04-13 18:39:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,178
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4532949
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Brighid/pseuds/Brighid
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stiles believes enough for the both of them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Market

**Author's Note:**

  * For [billtheradish](https://archiveofourown.org/users/billtheradish/gifts), [trilliath](https://archiveofourown.org/users/trilliath/gifts), [KouriArashi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/KouriArashi/gifts).



> This story references both the ballad "Tam Lin" and Rosetti's "Goblin Market". It is is dedicated to billtheradish, Trilliath and KouriArashi because writing has been very difficult for me and they inspired me.

Market

Stiles has been in line an hour now, long enough that the autumn wind with its bite of winter’s promise has pebbled his bare arms with gooseflesh, has made his nipples harden and rise beneath the leather vest he’s wearing. He barely notices, though, because in his left hand, the one that does not speak to the right, he has a leaf, an acorn and an apple pip, while in his right hand he is holding all the belief he can muster. His body stands awkward and straining between the two.

When he at last reaches the door, Stiles’ vision wavers, slides double, like a bad stereoscopic photo. The bouncer watching over the line is both, at once, a large, heavily tattooed man with a septum piercing and an eight foot tall minotaur, weirdly superimposed over one another. Stiles blinks, but the double-image remains. He breathes in deep, instead, lets his left hand and his right hand fold together, lets his belief touch the small trinity in his palm, lets the working happen. When he brings them apart he has in his hands a strawberry, a cherry, and a red, red poppy.

The bouncer smiles at him, and he sees the flash of the minotaur’s square, stained teeth. “Little brother, little brother, do you come to dance?” they say together, voices intertwined and echoing, with breath that smells of blood and grass.

“I’ve got my red shoes on,” Stiles agrees. “I’m up all night to get lucky?”

The minotaur laughs even as the bouncer plucks the fruits and flower from Stiles’ hands. “Welcome to the Market, little brother,” he says and leans down to draw a broad, hot tongue across Stiles’ jawline. “Have fun, little Halfling. Save a dance for me.”

Inside the Market is as without. To those with single sight it’s like any club, really. Half the room is taken up with a big, gleaming bar, a scattering of tables around a dance floor, a few pretty people dancing in gilded cages. There’s a lot of black light spots and garish gold accents. To those with second-sight the room is nothing more than the empty warehouse it’s probably always been, all stained dirty floors and broken shipping containers. On the dance floor the smattering of humans is vastly outnumbered by those who are other, and the contrast makes Stiles dizzy, a little nauseated. A pretty blonde smiles at him as he passes, touches his arm, but all he can see are green teeth, all he can feel is the slither of something cool and wet and drowning. He smiles thinly, shakes his head, moves towards the bar that is and is not.

The bartender looks normal, save for the goat ears, and Stiles is betting there’s matching legs just out of sight. “Let me guess. Bud Light?” he sneers, showing off strong, square teeth with a noticeable gap. Stiles smiles at him, dangerous, inviting. He doesn’t have tooth or claw or horns, but he’s got heart, heat, a spark.

“Something sweet and dark,” he says, and watches as the bartender’s slit iris widens then narrows. He pauses and Stiles waits, lets the heat and animal stink of the place sink into his bones, knowing a threshold guardian when he sees one.

“Sure thing, little brother,” the bartender says at last, smiling slightly, knowingly. When he turns Stiles can just make out the jut of horn from his tight, dark curls. Stiles pulls an oak leaf and a maple from his pocket, breathes on them until they tremble, waver and shift under the neon into the bright plastic of Canadian currency. When the bartender turns back the satyr is more pronounced, and he takes the money, snorts, hands Stiles a wooden cup filled to the brim. His smile widens when Stiles tips a libation onto the ground. “What are you playing at, little one?”

Stiles smiles back at him, all teeth. “I’m not playing. I’m here to party, dude.” He brings the cup to his mouth, swallows without drinking, and moves away from the bar, out into the dance floor, across to a half-empty table.

There is a fae there, entwined with a mortal girl; she is not drunk or high on molly but she might as well be. When a forked tongue slides over her jaw, into her ear she closes glassy eyes and sighs. With her breath out slips a silvery curl, and the fae gobbles it greedily, its darks eyes ecstatic. Stiles fingers tighten on his cup, but he says nothing.

At the far end of the room is a dais, and there She sits on a throne of skulls, and there is, for once, no double image, no glamour save for the small trickery to hide the reality of the bones She’s gathered. She makes Stiles think of Big Barda, a bit, tall and powerfully built. A crown wrought of oak, holly and hawthorn sits lightly on corn silk hair. She watches the room dispassionately. Two mortals are chained to Her throne, and sometimes She leans down, presses wine from a wooden cup to their lips. They drink deeply, sigh silver and She breathes it in.

It’s behind Her throne that draws his eyes, though, the gilt cage that holds what he’s come here for.

Derek Hale is in there. He sways back and forth on a swing in gold go-go shorts and full beta shift, empty-eyed and slack jawed. Beneath the shimmer and haze Stiles can see dozens of marks that have not healed; they’ve beaten Derek and cut runes into him and rubbed aconite paste to stain them, make them last until…Stiles’ fingers tighten on the cup, and the wood starts to smoulder and smoke.

He gets up, walks across the dance floor, straight to the dais. He sets his cup down on the edge. He bows low before Her, his body loose and graceful and for once utterly in control, then stands and throws a handful of mountain ash into the air. It snaps up and out into a ring that encloses him, Her, the dais. “I challenge you for the wolf,” Stiles says. Her cat’s eyes narrow, but She is silent.

He reaches into his pocket, pulls out acorns, blows on them until they are red and round and ripe rowanberries and throws them at Her. They whirl in the air, ring Her round and explode, spattering Her, burning Her. “I challenge you for the man,” he says.

She wipes a smeared cheek, and the burns heal with the passage of Her finger. “Pretty little tricks, Halfling child, but the wolf and the man are Ours. His lifeblood, his wolf teeth, his magics will be sacrifice and the Court lives on. He has eaten our bread and drunk our wine and he belongs to no one, for everyone who ever had claim is dead or abandoned.”

Stiles undoes the leather vest, pulls out a red ribbon of cloth, cut from an old hoodie, stained with his blood, and with Derek’s. He ignores Her, looks beyond Her into the cage. “I challenge you for my mate,” Stiles says softly, and believes the hardest he has ever believed in his life. He unwraps from it an iron key and kisses it. “I have the key to his heart, you see.” He shrugs off the vest, and on his shoulder is a perfect scar in the shape of Derek’s teeth, still shiny pink and new.

“It’s just he has trouble believing he can keep nice things,” Stiles says, just as gently. “I mean, he’s grumpy and kind of a downer and he has shitty taste in women, so he thinks that means he’s a failwolf, but we know better, don’t we, Mab?” He turns his gaze finally, looks at Her instead of Derek. “You wouldn’t want him if he didn’t mean something. You wouldn’t want him if he was worthless. His death alone cannot be the sacrifice, it’s what you take out of the world, what you rob the mortal world of. Because you’re a tricksy bitch, it’s what you do. Lie with images if not words. Drive him half mad with shadows, set him on us. Let him see me bitten and bloody and the wound turning black. Let him think whatever you need him to, let him crash into despair so deep he gives himself over willingly? Lying by omission. Reinterpreting meaning. Telling the truth slant. All things I am a fucking master at.” Stiles grins but it’s all teeth. “But the bite wasn’t a turning, or a killing. It was a claiming, and that’s a different sort of magic.”

He lunges then, presses the iron key to Her forehead. All around them the room is a frenzy of fae, a dark maelstrom battering at the circle he’d cast but they can’t break through because he believes they cannot, they will not because he has spent nine months tracking Derek fucking Hale to Surrey, British Columbia, Canada. He will be damned if he doesn’t fucking win against La Belle Dame Sans a Clue, because Stilinskis prefer to be lovers, but they’re goddamned good fighters when the cause is worthy.

Derek is fucking worthy.

“Unbind him,” he snarls. “Fucking undo your fairy charms, Mab. Because you have no claim. You made him mine through your fucked up games and so now you goddamn give him back or I will burn through your fucking skull into whatever lies beneath.”

“I could make you my king, little Halfling,” She hisses. “I could give you a dozen worlds more beautiful and shining than this one. I could give you eternal youth and power and,” Her eyes narrow, “I could give you your mother, I have charms to stop up death, Halfling.”

Stiles swallows, closes his eyes. “Unbind the wolf. Unbind the man. Unbind my mate. You have taken one who is claimed. You have taken one who is loved. You have taken what could not be freely given. Your sacrifice if forfeit. I ask you three times, unbind him.”

She closes Her pale eyes. There is a movement of air, a small storm, and then a familiar growling. “Much good may it do you, little Halfling. He has eaten and drunk with us. You have won him, only to lose him, because he will waste to nothing, craving only what only we can give him, and he shall never have again.”

Stiles digs into his pants with his free hand, pulls out a velvet pouch, throws out another ring of mountain ash, this time smaller, around just the two of them. When it settles, snaps into alignment he carefully steps out, leaving Her bound. He goes to the edge of the dais, reclaims his cup. He walks over to the cage and smiles at Derek’s human face.

“Hello, asshole. This is, like, the third time I’ve had to cross international borders because you got your fuzzy ass kidnapped. You owe me so much gas money.”

“You’re dead,” Derek says lowly, brokenly. He looks fragile and pale. “You rejected the bite.”

“You gave me the wrong sorta bite,” Stiles corrects. “I think we need to revisit the wolves and the bees, buddy. You went and made me your child bride, not your beta.” He leans in and rests his face against the bars, letting his forehead touch Derek’s. “I expect that when we get outta here, you’re gonna take me home and put a ring on it, because I cannot show off the scar when I go back to classes next fall. And then there’s all the housing paperwork, because married housing? Way nicer than the undergrad dorms. Just saying.” He closes his eyes, ignores the hordes of fae prowling the borders of his working, believes that it’s just the two of them until there is no sound but their heartbeats and their breath.

“Stiles,” Derek says, gearing up, Stiles is sure, for all sorts of rational arguments.

“Shut up, Derek,” he says gently. He touches the key to the cage and it opens. He pulls Derek into his arms, hugs him tight. “Now we just gotta take care of your fairy food poisoning, and wait until morning.”

He pulls Derek out onto the dais proper. “So, if I recall my Senior English class, there is a traditional method to this.” He lifts the wooden cup and takes a healthy mouthful even as Derek growls out a protest.

But Stiles doesn’t swallow, he just pulls Derek in, kisses him hard, presses the mouthful of mead between his lips and keeps kissing him until the cloying taste softens into something sweeter still. When they at last part Derek looks stronger, healthier and more than a little stunned.

“Stiles,” Derek says, a little lost, a little broken. “Stiles, you can’t…”

Stiles touches his left hand to Derek’s still sticky lips, silences him. “I think tonight proves I motherfucking can,” he says, grinning. Stiles touches his right hand to Derek’s heart, and believes enough for the both of them as they wait for morning to come.

**Author's Note:**

> I kinda figured helping Braeden out, Derek might have ended up an Alpha again. So this is a few years in the future, with an Alpha Derek. Because I think Derek could, over time, grow in to it.


End file.
